Center for Standards, Assessment, and Accountability

Grade Level: Middle School (6-8)

Parent Assessment Event Toolkit

The purpose of this PTA toolkit is to help answer parents’ questions about new state assessments aligned to new college and career readiness standards. The toolkit includes a broad variety of resources, including information about PARCC and Smarter Balanced assessments, assessment PowerPoint presentation templates for Common Core-participating states, event-planning tools to inform parents about changes in assessments, assessment fact […]

Parents’ Guides to Student Success

This guide, based on the Common Core State Standards, provides an overview for parents on key mathematics and English language arts/literacy content that their children will learn by the end of each year, from kindergarten through 12th grade. It also offers parents ideas for activities to help their children at home and topics that parents can […]

A Framework for K-12 Science Education: Practices, Crosscutting Concepts, and Core Ideas

In A Framework for K-12 Science Education: Practices, Crosscutting Concepts, and Core Ideas, the National Research Council articulates a new approach to K-12 science education and outlines a broad set of rigorous expectations intended to support all students in achieving scientific literacy. It provides guidelines on how to become better prepared to pursue STEM careers. […]

Developing Assessments for the Next Generation Science Standards

This resource is based on the vision and principles of the Framework for K-12 Science Education: Practices, Crosscutting Concepts, and Core Ideas, addressing NGSS-based assessment development practices. The three-dimensional science design and vision in the NGSS require new approaches for science assessment, posing challenges and opportunities for assessment development. To address this need, the Committee […]

Monitoring Progress Toward Successful K-12 STEM Education: A Nation Advancing?

This is the second report by the National Research Council (NRC) on science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education in K-12 schools. This report follows up on the 2011 report to identify methods for tracking progress toward quality STEM education. The Committee on an Evaluation Framework for Successful K-12 STEM Education, convened by the NRC, developed 14 […]

Successful STEM Education

This website, funded by the National Science Foundation, provides resources and events that highlight promising practices and tools in support of effective STEM education. The information on the website is designed for those involved in K-12 education to take action on creating successful STEM programs: policymakers; school and district decision-makers; local, state, and federal government […]